Poiema Wins!

On Wednesday, June 17th, at World Vision in Mississauga, The Word Guild presented the Canadian Christian Writing Awards at their annual black-tie Gala. My poetry collection Poiema (Wipf & Stock) was selected as a winner in the "Special" category --- which includes poetry, art and gift books; Duet for Wings and Earth (Sono Nis), by Victoria poet Barbara Colebrook Peace, shared the honour. The judge, Maxine Hancock, a professor at Regent College in Vancouver, gave Poiema a perfect score. For information about other winners at the awards, visit The Word Guild's website.

Learn To Write Poetry at Write! Canada

If you haven’t yet registered for Write! Canada (June 18-20, 2009) let me encourage you to wait no longer. Held annually in Guelph, Ontario, Write! Canada is Canada’s largest Christian Writers Conference.

If you’re already coming, I want you to take my workshop “The Essentials of Writing Poetry” on the Saturday morning. This workshop will be valuable for all of your writing ventures — and especially helpful when you’re writing poetry. Since poetry is the most concentrated form of writing, the skills you fine-tune here will quickly transfer to your fiction, and non-fiction too.

I guarantee you’ll come away with plenty to think about, and a lot you’ll be able to apply immediately to your current writing. I’ll share with you the principles of good poetry, and share examples from many of the best Christian poets of our time. For those who have had little exposure to contemporary poetry, this will broaden your conference experience.

On the Friday, I’ll also be hosting the Night Owl Poetry Reading. Bring your favourite poems to share with other like-minded people.

Review of Poiema by Violet Nesdoly

POIEMA
Author: D.S. Martin
-----In Poiema, a collection of 66 poems, award-winning Canadian poet D.S. Martin fleshes out the book's Greek title. From the opening "Caedmon" ("You stammer a protest as Moses did / but he calls you to sing") to the final "Poiema" ("Even more so --we are His workmanship --His poem"), he reveals the essence of one of God's poems - himself.
-----Martin grows out of rich family soil that stretches from Asia's mission fields to Europe's theatre of war. We savour the pieces that describe his ancestors and relatives: "Family trees / filled with testifying birds."
-----It's easy to identify with the tension in Martin's poems about faith. He declares: "I believe in the ram caught in the thicket --the bread / that came down from heaven". Yet sometimes God feels absent to him. Thereare Bethlehem mothers who receive no angelic warning. Some who fall among thieves are not rescued by Good Samaritans.
-----Woven throughout the collection are poems about mundane things too - shopping carts, garden gnomes, hands, phone calls. They resonate with familiarity and amuse with whimsy. But even in these, Martin manages to turn our attention to the serious or eternal, often with startling last lines.
-----Martin's poetic versatility adds interest and pleasure. In addition to free verse there are prose poems, haiku and a variety of traditional forms from a ghazal (type of Persian poem) to villanelle (French form with rhyme and repeated lines). However, nowhere does he stray from his self-imposed form of no punctuation (in-line tab spaces replace some as in the quotes above) and the use of "&" instead of the word "and".
-----Poiema is Martin's poetic DNA - a collectionthat reveals a skilful artist with a unique perspective. But these poems are also universal. They probe, delight and spur us on. Finally, they leave us with hope and a challenge. For we too are God's poems.------VIOLET NESDOLY
Faith Today January/February 2009